


Impressions

by sophistry



Category: Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Comment Fic, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-16
Updated: 2011-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-26 03:51:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophistry/pseuds/sophistry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perhaps it was that Jack had not been able to satisfactorily explain why they should take on passengers – passengers that were no sort of envoy, nor of any readily apparent military or naval character.</p><p>Surprise crossover; slashy if you squint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impressions

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://bookshop.livejournal.com/875626.html?thread=31071338#t31071338), for the Red Cross Ficathon; also archived [here](http://copinggoggles.livejournal.com/562716.html#cutid1). I did it for charity. That's my excuse.

"Well," thought Stephen, shaking out his breeches with an unusual vehemence, "give them joy of it." He paused, surprised to find himself so curiously out of sorts; curiously indeed, for was not this cabin, this moderately cramped and low-ceilinged cabin off the gunroom, a habitual sleeping-place of his? To be sure, as Jack’s guest, he was normally accorded the coach as a place to berth – a rather more capacious berth, being ordinarily the Captain’s dining cabin – but Jack Aubrey, the creature, was a prodigious snorer, often setting up such a racket through the thin partitions, such a Jovian thunder ("Ha ha," thought Stephen, "I shall tell that to him: a Jovian thunder."), that the Doctor was obliged to sling his cot below in the hopes of sleeping at all. So why then, for all love, did this forced but temporary relocation find him so damnably irritated? True, Stephen was forced to admit, stentorian sleeper though Jack was, his snores were as regular a part of Stephen’s ship-board existence as Sunday divisions, and true, he resented being parted from them by anything but his own volition; but even so, he perceived (being a perceptive man) that this was not all there was to his humour.

Perhaps it was that Jack had not been able to satisfactorily explain why they should take on passengers – passengers that were no sort of envoy, nor of any readily apparent military or naval character. Of course, Stephen was hardly as who should say ignorant of the fact that a man’s official function might bear no reflexions upon his _unofficial_ activities; indeed, something of the reserved, closed manner of one of their charges led him to wonder whether they might be in his own line of work (this, and of course the fact that the man wore coloured lenses in his glasses, just as Stephen himself did when he wished his gaze to remain inscrutable). Still, it disconcerted him: by nature and by long habit, Stephen did not like to be in the dark, and to discover himself so was unpleasant, to say nothing of worrying.

The other of the pair was a different matter: as fair as his companion was dark, he was also as gay and open as his friend was cool and diffident, possessed of something of the irresistible likeability which had so disarmed Stephen when first he had met Jack Aubrey. It was from him that Stephen had attempted to extract information, enquiring discreetly about the nature of their voyage, their business in Gibraltar. But in the chaos of coming aboard, of casting off, of determining where the two passengers should be put (to be regretted extremely, little in the way of space, the dear _Surprise_ being only a frigate, and a small one at that – might Jack offer the gentlemen the use of the coach, a bulkhead to be whipped up in no time at all to give each a cabin of their own; not at all, the gentlemen will not hear of it, habitual travelling companions, perpetually in each other’s pockets, will manage admirably with the coach undivided), the thread had been lost, the conversation subsumed, and then forgotten.

Dinner, however, might be more successful, and even as Stephen pulled on his stockings and wrestled with his neck-cloth, he dismissed the subject from his present mind, finding himself strangely unable to keep a firm grasp on the line of thought even in the relative silence of his cabin. Soon enough, he felt his spirits lift – in part because, having moved on to more general musings on the characters of those occupying the coach, he found it extraordinarily difficult to maintain any real sort of ill-will towards the friendlier of the two. A paederast, Stephen had no doubt, and one whose nature was as badly concealed as La Mothe of Paris, but (like Adhemar de La Mothe) a singularly pleasant one, and (unlike La Mothe) wholly decent. With the blessing, Stephen would not again have to preserve Jack’s innocence from an impossible infatuation. Indeed, he might be relieved of this in any case, but it would be unwise to suppose; although Mr. Fell’s proclivities were undeniable, as to the nature of his companion, Stephen could not say.

Dinner was, in point of fact, a grand success; Mr. Fell, confirming the third of Stephen’s initial impressions of him, was both intelligent and a man of letters, and his amiable way of speaking was very well with the Captain, he having particularly obliged Jack by laughing at a carefully-constructed witticism exchanging 'bark' for 'barque'. But it was the more contrary of their guests who provided the evening’s other pleasant _surprise_ , as it were; Stephen, holding forth on the treasures awaiting a naturalist at their destination, on the fauna of Gibraltar, on those species, those _genera_ which fairly thrived in a warmer climate – the beetles, the birds, and above all, the reptiles – was delighted to find, in the person of Mr. Crowleigh, a marvellously keen herpetologist.


End file.
